What is a Case Study?
A case study is a form of advertising copy that allows you to show your customers how you have helped other people and businesses. It puts the solutions that you offer on a realistic, familiar footing to your customers.
A case study is a story from real life that describes how a significant technical, process, or business problem was solved. Like all stories, a case study has a standard structure – a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.
Why Should You Develop a Software Case Study?
Case studies have inherent credibility because they are based on factual accounts. A well written case study promotes your product or service effectively while avoiding the appearance of self promotional fluff.
The case study is a story from real life that shows how you helped a customer. Therefore, prospects will be more likely to pay attention closely to case studies that resemble their own problems or challenges than they may be to pay attention to standard marketing copy.
If you have been frustrated with lack of visitor engagement with feature-oriented product presentations, then you may wish to consider case studies. They can effectively supplement the usual bulleted feature lists, product descriptions and technical narratives with real life experiences.
What Does a Software Case Study Look Like?
You are most likely familiar with the format of case studies and you will probably recognize it “in the wild.” But let’s break down the structure of the most common type of commercial case study.
- Introduction or description of situation – This is where the customer – is introduced, along with their general status or situation. This sets the stage for the type of stakeholder being discussed.
- Description of problem and stakeholder’s goal – Here, we describe the problem that is being faced in this case study. What needs to be solved, fixed, reduced, increased, eliminated, or happen, in general?
- The proposal – our vendor’s product or service is introduced as a possible solution to the problem. The reasons for the vendor’s product being a “fix” are described.
- The solution – we now tell a very brief “story within a story” describing how the vendor assisted the customer. Even if the product is technology-based, we want a “big story” – the general actions that were taken to solve the problem. Please note that we’re not trying to gloss over details – we just want to keep focus on the expertise and the quality of our vendor.
- The conclusion – our story concludes (hopefully) with a bang. We can now make concluding statements that describe the benefits that the customer enjoys, and the ongoing success that the customer will reap as a consequence of the services employed during this case.
Case Study Examples
I have developed case studies for clients. Here are a few examples: a software consultant’s cases, a web developer’s case study, and an application developer’s case.
Case Study Example: The System Security Tool
- Introduction: Initech LLC is a 90 million dollar per year privately owned vendor of enterprise banking systems.
- Problem Statement: Initech was experiencing an abundance of employee-injected viruses and worms on its production servers on a regular basis.
- The Proposal: An expert consultant was brought in to recommend a solution. He proposed that a product called Rid-It Pro, made by BugBGone, Inc. was an effective solution for the removal of viruses and malware and has extensive monitors to detect employee abuse.
- The Solution: BugBGone’s flagship product “Rid-It Pro” was deployed on Initech’s servers with a minimum of downtime and customer expense. Rid-It Pro effectively identified one employee in possession of key system passcodes who was responsible for the injection of worms. The viruses were removed immediately upon discovery of the cause.
- The Conclusion: The use of Rid-It Pro prevented several hundred thousand dollars of further losses. Rid-It Pro’s forensic capabilities lead to the recovery of virtually all monies stolen. The evidence gathered by Rid-It Pro was successfully used in a termination action and pending lawsuit.
How Does This Information Help You?
This paper shows how case studies are structured and the type of information that they present. If you wish to develop your own case study, this essay will give you the tools to start a case study project. If you choose to hire someone to develop your case studies, then you know enough now to evaluate your writer’s delivered copy.
Conclusion
Case studies are an affordable, effective way to nail down and publicize the work that your company does for your clients.
I hope that this essay has helped you to understand more about case studies and has piqued your interest in this unique copy format as a vehicle for outreach.
I create case studies, and a wide range of other marketing materials for my clients. Please contact me at (513) 760-5699 or don@softwarecopywriter.com to discuss your needs.